Thursday

Jan 18, 2018 at 7:38 PMJan 18, 2018 at 7:43 PM

Changes would add $5.1 million in revenue to state next year, and would add 'acute pain' to the list of qualifying medical conditions, making people eligible for temporary medical marijuana cards after things such as dental work, sprained ankles and broken bones.

For the second time since she’s been in office, Governor Raimondo is using the budget to propose sweeping changes to the state’s medical marijuana program. The linchpin of this year’s proposal: a dramatic increase in the number of medical marijuana dispensaries from three to 15.

The market for those dispensaries would not only be the 19,138 medical marijuana patients in state but thousands more from Connecticut and Massachusetts who would also now be allowed to buy their marijuana in Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, the governor wants to add “acute pain” to the list of qualifying medical conditions — making people eligible for temporary medical marijuana cards after things such as dental work, sprained ankles and broken bones. Some 65 percent of patients currently in the program qualify because of "chronic pain," which encompasses conditions such as severe headaches, arthritis and back pain.

The combination of changes is projected to result in some $5.1 million in additional revenue to the state next year. Some $2.6 million would be transferred to the state's general fund.

Norman Birenbaum, the state's top medical marijuana regulator, said the goal is to make medical marijuana — the kind grown in state-regulated businesses with safety controls — more widely available. Increasing competition among the dispensaries should also mean a greater variety of marijuana strains and hopefully lower prices — things that could encourage patients to move from home grows to dispensary sales, he said.

"The thing I think people need to understand is that the majority of medicine is coming from folks that are really not proactively regulated," Birenbaum said, referring to home grows where there are at least 61,500 registered plants compared with 9,200 at dispensaries and cultivation facilities.

But regulators do not have the manpower to inspect the home grows. They don't oversee pesticide use or quality control. And people who grow at home have the ability to "traffic unsafe marijuana" both to patients and the black market, Birenbaum said.

The question is, "How are we going to meet the demand? Are we going to do that through regulated means ... or are we going to leave people to do it on their own with threats to public health and safety?" Birenbaum said.

On average, Birenbaum said, most states have about 1,400 patients per dispensary while Rhode Island has more than 6,000. The number of dispensaries has never increased since the operations first opened in 2013, yet the number of patients increases by 20 percent to 30 percent each year. The 12 new dispensaries would be selected through a competitive application process. No timelines are included in the budget legislation. That would come later through drafted regulation.

Mike Cerullo, a licensed psychotherapist and a member of the state study commission on legalization, called the proposal for more dispensaries "an effort to side-step" the study commission's process "by establishing a number of retail outlets that would be up and running if recreational use" is ever approved.

"They're operating as if legalization is a foregone conclusion," Cerullo said. "They're not treating this like medicine. We don't have dosing standards. It's being sold as a way to get high."

Birenbaum disputed the notion that the proposals have anything to do with a potential recreational marijuana market.

Matt Schweich, interim executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said while there were some positive changes proposed for the medical program, the governor was "short-sighted" by not proposing legalization.

The budget "ignores the simple reality that recreational marijuana will soon be readily available to any Rhode Islander willing to travel to Massachusetts," Schweich said.

The call for more dispensaries has the potential to draw backlash from the three existing ones in the state. A last-minute budget amendment proposed by Raimondo last year that was never approved called for six more dispensaries. It gave each of the existing dispensaries another storefront location. But the new proposal would not allow existing dispensaries to expand.

"Any discussion about additional revenue to the state through the medical marijuana program and the impact of recreational sales in Massachusetts starting in less than six months is important," Chris Reilly, a spokesman for the state's largest dispensary, the Thomas C. Slater Center in Providence, said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, patients could be gearing up to fight a part of the proposal that calls for cutting patient grows from 12 plants down to eight. Law enforcement and others have argued that 12 plants can produce far more dried marijuana than a patient can legally possess. The budget also calls for increasing patient possession limits from 2.5 ounces to 3 ounces.